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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27913237">L's funeral</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vashti/pseuds/Vashti'>Vashti</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Death Note (Anime &amp; Manga)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, that one scene from the OVA</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2009-02-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2009-02-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 19:13:44</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,020</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27913237</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vashti/pseuds/Vashti</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>L is dead. Light, uh, pays his respects. Oneshot based on the anime sequence.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>L &amp; Yagami Light</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>L's funeral</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Funerals were always about putting things behind you: the person,
the memories. They were a boundary, that let you look back and see
the past with a fresh perspective. On one side, the history you
shared with the deceased - on the other, your life after it.</p><p>Light had listened as his father spoke, and then he'd mounted the
stage himself, voiced the image he was presenting of a bruised young
man, the picture-perfect portrait of someone in deep mourning, shut
down, respectful, repressed. Remembering. And artful, practised, not
even truly lying - for in the moment of his performance he almost
believed every word - he'd spoken the piece they expected him to say.
And they'd fallen for it, every one, just as they always did.</p><p>And then the others had left - all but one - as he'd been waiting
for them to do since the moment they arrived: to leave him alone,
tucked away with his grief, to speak the words he couldn't say before
an audience.</p><p>And he had.</p><p>Light had barely heard Ryuk's whining and complaining. He'd
wondered if he'd feel different, with L locked away in the ground
forever. Whether he'd be different, now that it was all firmly
concluded. And in that one perfect moment, standing over the grave,
what he'd felt more than anything else - like a bursting dam,
liberated, scouring everything in its path to bedrock - had been
<em>relief.</em> Relief, yes, and freedom, like the pure landscape left
behind after the churning waters had passed. And there had only been
one possible response - a laugh, clotted and mad, that had bubbled up
out of him like air dissolved in the floodwaters, clinging to the
debris and the dead. The laughter that had lifted him right up to the
clouds, so he could see—</p><p>He could <em>see</em> it, in front of him in the sunset, burning red
and pink - his new world, spinning like a top. Not so much like a
pearl, that he'd been building up layer by layer - more like a
sculpture, with the dross rubbed away slowly, in fractions and
fragments. A pinch of sand at a time, a lifetime's work, wearing away
everything - everyone - worthless, until he'd uncovered perfection.
Finally, his vision - so close he could almost, <em>almost</em> touch
it. For there was nobody between him and it, any longer - nothing but
a few handfuls of sand.</p><p>And that realisation had thrown him right into the grave, on his
hands and knees: he'd screamed the sweetness of his victory and
triumph right into the tombstone. He'd wanted to dig down with his
bare hands, rip L's lifeless body right out of the earth and beat it
until it was unrecognisable, until the dead flesh squelched and split
beneath his fists: he'd wanted to claw out those blank eyes and crush
them, shred the face from the skull and then shatter its delicate
bones right into the brain - knifing through it with birdlike
splinters and shards, smashing it, destroying it, the place where
once all those suspicions and visions and stories had sat - but
failing that, he could, at least, scream the truth of it all loud
enough to sound right down into L's ears, where the tiny bones should
still be vibrating, conveying Light's words right into the bastard's
dead mind - even if it was already rotting to pulp.</p><p>At that moment, screaming and barking and clawing at the grave
like a rabid animal, he hadn't even been <em>thinking</em> about Kira,
or about his apotheosis, or the new world, or any of the rest of it.
In fact, in retrospect, he hadn't been thinking at all: just
reacting, feeling: a blinding tempest of rage and vitriol the likes
of which he'd never known. A vortex, swallowing him right down into
all his deepest fears and anxieties, the sorts of thing that he never
even admitted to himself, that he couldn't <em>possibly</em> allow
himself to think. Because there had been something about L, something
unique, something Light had never encountered: there'd been a very
real possibility that <em>L might have turned out to be better than
him.</em></p><p>And that had been intolerable: impossible. Right at the end of the
first week, tricked and deceived and - temporarily, always
temporarily - defeated, Light had known L had to go. And he'd put
everything on the line to make it happen - his pride, his life, his
ambitions: nothing had been more important than defeating and
destroying L. <em>I will definitely find and finish you.</em> He'd
sworn it: it had been his promise, his vow.</p><p>And now it was done. He'd won: the only person who could threaten
him - who'd threatened Light on every level conceivable - was
somewhere beneath him, under two metres of dirt. All of it over: he'd
crossed the battlefield and stepped safely onto friendly territory,
come home from the war and taken out all the frustrations and
sacrifices and losses on his wife. It had almost been like waking up
from a dream - not a nightmare at all, but some bright promise that
he could barely see in the day. Something that drove him on and on,
yet which he could almost never reach: a shrieking, raw pleasure in
his power and his abilities which he simply couldn't touch, most of
the time.</p><p>But it had left him ready to move on into the future.</p><p>A breath, two, and he'd drawn himself back in: almost his old
self, his old nature - but more certain, more determined than he had
been. <em>Better</em> than he had been, he knew. L was past. Exorcised.
Replaced with a new certainty and determination and <em>knowledge,</em>
things that ran deeper than they did before. As if some of the fury
and fire of his madness had settled in his blood. There had been soil
ground into his trousers, and he'd screamed his throat to burning,
and his fingernails had been dirty and split, yet when Light had got
up from that grave and told Ryuk what he was going to show him, he'd
known himself to be a god.</p><p>And he'd known nobody could get in his way - ever, ever again.</p>
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